Molto Bene
by Sashet
Summary: In order to move on The Doctor must face up to how he and all the others on the Crusader 50 acted on their trip to the Sapphire Waterfall. Post Midnight -Oneshot


A/N: Yet another of my attempts to get inside The Doctor's head this time after the events of Midnight.

Usual thanks go to Dr. D for the beta.

Reviews are love!!!

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I hurried Donna from the Leisure Palace to the TARDIS as quickly as I thought was possible without arousing her suspicion. I didn't speak to her much and I certainly didn't want to offer any kind of explanation as to what had happened to me in the Crusader 50.

Midnight was a planet I wanted to leave and NEVER return to.

"What's your hurry…Doctor…wait for me."

"It's time to move on," I told her without looking back or slowing down to let her catch me up. I plucked the key for the TARDIS from my pocket and let myself in.

"Well, you're not likely to outstay your welcome at this rate," I heard her grumble as the pace of her footsteps quickened just a little. I think she might have been worried in case I went off without her!

Inside the TARDIS, I tossed my coat onto one of the solid coral struts and let my hand linger for a moment. Bathed in her warm glow and soothed by her gentle calming connection to me I felt safe, for the first time since I had stepped onto that ill-fated trip to the Sapphire Waterfall I actually felt safe. Even back in the Leisure Palace as I watched them take away the remains of the Crusader 50 and told the authorities what I could about the events that had occurred in those seemingly endless hours out on the planet's surface I hadn't really felt safe.

I didn't know what it was we had encountered out there and whether or not it still roamed free under an X-Tonic sun and that unnerved me, and I'm the Doctor, it takes a LOT to unnerve me.

Lost in my thoughts I think I must have jumped slightly when I heard the doors closing and pulled my hand swiftly off the strut. I thought Donna hadn't noticed but I should have known better. She hadn't been 'the best temp in Chiswick' without an eye for the detail, especially when the detail wasn't what or where it should be.

"You OK Doctor?" she asked.

I forced a smile, "Yes of course I am. You know me I'm always alright."

To cover myself I bounced on my heels and sprinted the last few yards to the console, where I made a big deal of rushing about pushing buttons and pulling levers. Thankfully Donna didn't realise that more than a few of my gestures were only for show… although I REALLY must find out what that little blue switch does!

"So where shall go? Free choice…any time, any place…come on Donna …whole wide universe, well universes actually, waiting just for you. So what do you say, where shall we go next?"

She looked at me…well if I'm honest she looked right through me, through my façade and didn't break her gaze until I finally calmed and looked at her.

"What?" I asked.

"Are you going to tell me what happened out there...what really happened… the full version not that sanitised rubbish you told them back there?"

I tugged on my earlobe, it was a habit I had whenever I was… uncomfortable. "I told you what happened and now it is over and it's time we moved on."

Digging into my suit pocket I pulled out my glasses put them on and then made a show of looking at something on the scanner and tweaking a couple of dials, turning half away from Donna as I did so. "How about the planet Renroc, it has some great restaurants and we never did get to try the anti gravity one on Midnight."

I felt a tug on my arm. "Stop it Doctor," she insisted pulling me back to face her. "Just stop it and talk to me, tell me what happened."

I knew she meant well and that she only wanted to help but I wasn't ready to tell anybody what had happened inside the Crusader 50. Maybe I would one day but for now it was something that even I hadn't come to terms with and if I couldn't accept it then how could I tell anybody else?

"There's nothing to tell…we went out…broke down…got attacked by an alien life form…survived and came back. That's it… now let's get out of here. What do you say?"

"But Doctor…"

"But nothing Donna, there is NOTHING more to tell," I barked at her more harshly than she deserved. She looked briefly hurt and then she looked sad. "Sorry," I added, meaning for my outburst but also covering all the things I couldn't yet tell her.

"Well diamonds weren't this girl's best friend so let's get out of here."

"Where to Donna Noble…your choice."

She looked wistfully at me and then with a sigh announced. "Home Doctor.. I'd like to go home."

"Well that's not very adventurous now is it? All the known and probably some of the unknown corners of more universes than you can shake a stick at and you want to go home!"

"Yes Doctor I want to go home… just for a while. I want to see my family; I want to go down the pub with Veena and you know what I think?"

"What?"

"I think that right now you need some time alone to do whatever it is that Time Lords do when they have 'stuff' to sort out. Just promise me one thing Doctor?"

"What Donna?" I asked hoping the slight tinge of exasperation I felt didn't show itself in my voice.

"Come back to me."

"Always," I said with a smile.

"No Doctor, I mean take as much time as you need but when you come back, just be… well just be yourself again. Be the Doctor."

I'd always known that Donna Noble was a special woman and it was times like this that brought it home to me. I was lucky to have her in my life and I really should tell her that. Yet again she had seen through me, she knew what I needed even if I didn't.

I swallowed. "Home it is then," I set the co-ordinates and watched as the time rotor slowly rose and fell and I felt the low thrum of the TARDIS as she spun in space. "And thank you Donna," I added without looking at her.

"You're welcome you big space dumbo."

***********

"Have a good time then Donna," I told her as she pushed open the TARDIS doors and stepped out. I thought I caught a glimpse of Wilf hurrying towards her with his arms outstretched. "Say hi to your Mum for me."

"You could tell her yourself."

Inwardly I shuddered, what was it about the mothers of my companions that made them dislike me so much, after all what is there to dislike? I'm pretty fantastic…aren't I?

**But how did you know what to do?**

**Because I'm clever.**

**I see… well that makes things clear**_._

"Doctor, I'm going now."

"Yeah, see you later Donna," I'm not sure I kept the slight tremor out of my voice.

The door shut with a solid and reassuring click leaving me alone. I let out a long breath and swung to face the console…I couldn't stay on Earth…I had to go somewhere where I could be sure that I wouldn't be disturbed. I didn't need Donna coming back before I had sorted through my 'stuff' as she had so quaintly put it.

The emptiness of a pocket of space and time that was just out of space and time would suit me well enough I reasoned and set the co-ordinates. As the time rotor rose and fell faster and faster and I could feel the pull of the Earth lessening as I got further and further away, I think I actually began to relax a little. After all, nothing could get through the TARDIS doors especially not when we were in flight… well yes, technically, the space ship Titanic had, but that was through the walls and I had left the defences down .. but under normal circumstances nothing could enter the TARDIS and so I was safe, alone and safe.

I paced the console room clockwise and then anti-clockwise. I opened up several floor gratings and tried to find things that needed fixing, or even things that I could just fiddle with. I wandered through the winding corridors of my ship, not looking for any particular room just looking for excuses not to have to face what happened on the planet Midnight inside the Crusader 50.

Yet again I found myself at the door to the library, it was as if the TARDIS herself was trying to tell me something and so with a heavy heart and a sense of foreboding I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The room was, of course, bigger on the inside, full of books and papers that I had collected throughout all of my many years of travelling. I always did like a good read! In the middle of the room was a spiral staircase that seemed to go up forever and on the bottom step was an ostentatious quill pen and a blue leather bound journal….just like the one I would later give to River Song.

I picked up the journal turning it in my hands, feeling the untold weight of the words inside it. It was the place I put into the written word the things I had seen and done that I could never put into spoken words. The place I shared with myself the things in my life that I couldn't live with.

The last time I had written in the journal it had been about the Time War.

There was a well used and very comfortable leather wingback chair pulled to the side of a heavy wooden desk, ready and waiting for me. I dropped into it with a sigh of resignation and propped my feet on the desk, resting the journal on my lap. I fidgeted until I was sure I was comfortable and then, when I could no longer do anything but face my fears I reached out and opened the journal.

_The planet Midnight is remarkable for many reasons – it has a surface encrusted with diamonds that because of the X-Tonic sun that orbits it nobody will ever see._

Facts are always a good place to start – I like facts and certainties and things that I can explain away.

_It has a sapphire waterfall and to me that sounded like fun – as I said to Donna – 'taking a big space truck with a bunch of strangers across a diamond planet called Midnight, what could possibly go wrong?'_

_I'd always thought that I was cleverer than most – that I could see things that they could only dream about, but this trip, this supposedly innocent sight seeing trip with a bunch of humans…_

(And they do get ALL over the known galaxies...thank goodness)

_Should have been nothing more than that… and yet it turned into something that showed the best and also the worst of ALL of us on that 'big space truck'. But above all it showed me that sometimes being the cleverest person isn't always an advantage._

I thought I noticed a slight tremble in my hand as I wrote those last few words, had I acted as badly as those I shared the Crusader 50 with? I hadn't been ready to commit murder through the fear of something I didn't understand but I hadn't been prepared to accept or understand their fear and that was as just as bad.

_Intolerance and arrogance even in the face of fear are not traits I should aspire to and yet when I was alone and scared they rose to the surface and I didn't question them, and because I was alone nobody questioned them for me and they were nearly my undoing._

I'm a little surprised I wrote those thoughts down; they aren't usually something that I would acknowledge. I think my last few companions are having an effect on me… well on this version of me at least… they stop me from doing and saying all manner of things. This version of me is as rude as I was 4 lifetimes ago and as arrogant as … well actually I think I've always been arrogant, (even if I choose to call it by another name!).

_I don't know if it was the 'creature' that caused the Crusader 50 to break down or if that was just a coincidence but I do know that once it had gained an access to the truck (and I would LOVE to know how it did that through those walls!) I couldn't wait to discover more about it._

I know… not always a good move but I'm 900 years old (give or take a few) and I'm too old to change. A new life form to me is something to be cherished first and worried about later… except maybe the Daleks and I think that is because I knew the damage they could do before they did.

_Something had possessed Sky Silvestry and I just wanted to help it… I'm not sure that initially I even really took account of how scared the others were I was so wrapped in helping Sky and, (if I'm honest and because I know nobody will ever see this), in making myself look good too. I thought that once I knew what was going on and why then I would just stand up, tell them, be THE DOCTOR and they would just listen, accept what I told them and be impressed. That was the way it usually worked._

Only this time the worst side of human nature came to the front and far, far too quickly for me to notice. Sometimes for someone who is so clever I can be really thick… and insensitive...and just plain DUMB!

This wasn't the Titanic where they had followed me and did what I asked without question even if it cost them their lives, this was just the opposite.

_All they wanted to do was survive, get back to the Leisure Palace and go back to their normal, safe lives. They didn't want to die out there and they would do anything to ensure that they didn't and it took me too long to realise that. I should have known better after all I've spent a lot of my 900 years with and around humans and I'd like to think that I understood them… but this time…. This time I didn't understand them at all...not until it was almost too late._

_The 'creature' took their fears and somehow, by simple manipulation of Sky and eventually of me too, amplified them to such a degree that they lost all capacity to reason. Lost the ability to think and behave like rational humans._

That was it.. it made them irrational because they didn't understand. I know that is a natural human reaction to fear the things they can not understand but I don't think the same way… for me it is the opposite but then I'm a Time Lord and we are… well we are different. (Is that arrogant..? I must ask Donna).

Or am I just making excuses for them?

Maybe they just wanted to kill us both…I mean we were both a bit 'different' even before the creature came. We were both alone on a trip that isn't for loners and maybe that was enough to single us out. I don't think that is true though, I think that humans are better than that and that these were just the desperate acts of desperate people.

_I think that maybe Jethro was right when he said it picked on Sky because she was the most vulnerable. I think it just wanted a way into the Crusader 50 and she was the most afraid and therefore, the easiest target. She had fears that the others didn't, fears for her life even before we broke down. I doubt she fought 'it' – whatever it was. I doubt she knew how to fight it and I'm sure it didn't give her the chance._

_When the time came I couldn't fight it either and that was a horrific feeling. The feeling of whatever it was slowly and surely taking control of my mind and my body and no matter what I tried to do to stop it nothing worked. I don't think I have ever felt more helpless…._

Why couldn't I fight it?

I knew it would come after me…I was the smartest person there. I was the biggest threat to whatever it wanted so…. I should have been prepared but I wasn't, I was too preoccupied with other things – with stopping a lynch mob driven by hatred and fear - with trying to find out all I could about whatever the creature was – even when it singled me out and started to turn the others against me I still thought I could talk my way out – I still thought I could help it.

I closed my eyes as unbidden memories of the passengers on the Crusader 50 turning against me for what I considered to be no reasons flashed in my mind:

**I don't want her becoming me or things could get a whole lot worse.**

**Oh like you're so special**

**As it happens yes I am.**

**There isn't a vote, it's not happening! Ever. If you try to throw her out of that door then you'll have to get past me first.**

**Okay**

**Fine by me**

**But since the trouble started... you've been loving it.**

**It has to be said you do seem to have a certain ..glee**

**All right, I'm interested yes, I can't help it…**

**Listen to me right now, because you need me, all of you, if we are going to get out of this then you need me.**

**So you keep saying, you've been repeating yourself more than her!**

I felt the dread fear I had back on the Crusader – the fear of the power of the creature to turn people into something they aren't. It took several long moments before I could convince myself that I wasn't back there, surrounded by fear and terror and a complete lack of understanding…from ALL of us. The low thrum of the TARDIS as she turned in the void of space finally brought me back.

I stroked the plumes of the quill laying them neatly back into line, steadying the shake in my hand before I carried on.

_They all got swept along… all of them, even Professor Hobbes and Dee Dee who I thought were smart enough to know better. Biff and Val and the Hostess pulled them in with their paranoia and their panic until nobody could think for themselves any more and nobody wanted to. All they wanted was an answer, a quick fix and that quick fix was murder! None of them wanted to question the others because they didn't want to be singled out and I didn't think they would turn on me._

I_ couldn't let them do what they said and so I stood up to them and they left me with no alternative but to face the creature alone. They made it plain that they didn't trust me and somehow my best weapons, my thoughts and my words just failed me. I said what I was thinking and it just backfired on me time after time. Every word and every phrase seemed to make them more and more convinced that I was as much of a danger as Sky._

_Words are what define me._

_And this time the definition was…dangerous alien threat._

But worse was to come.

I shut the journal and tossed it onto the desk, unfolded myself from the chair and stalked from the library.

I still couldn't …didn't want… to admit to what happened next.

Tea and tinkering didn't really help.

Prowling and pacing didn't really help.

Kicking inanimate parts of the TARDIS didn't really help...but it did hurt!

I thought about heading back to Earth and leaving the whole sorry mess just as it was. But ignoring it wasn't going to make it go away and even though I was pretty sure that I could act like the Doctor that Donna wanted and expected I wouldn't really be him and she deserved better than that.

People of all races are scared of something...the dark, the light, some are even afraid of me, but my fear is of the things I cannot control. I can travel in time and space, bend events to my whim and yet always remain in control.

Except on Midnight I lost that control.

_Even as I talked and tried to reason with the passengers on the Crusader 50 the 'creature' was evolving. It was taking what it could see and hear and learning from it, using what little was left of Sky to help it understand and then it struck._

_It started simply enough by identifying me as the most likely threat to whatever it was that it wanted_.

More facts… did I mention that I like facts?

_When it stopped copying the others, it gave them a sense of relief; it also gave them one more reason to turn against me. It didn't stop copying me and to the others that made me like it and therefore, something to be feared._

_Even when I should have walked away I couldn't, the lure of a new life form was just too great. I KNEW I could help it… I'm the Doctor it's what I do_.

_As I talked to it and tried to reason with it a strange thing happened to me, my ability to speak seem to become impaired. I couldn't think fast enough to form the words before the 'creature' did and within just a few moments we were speaking at the same time and then suddenly it was ahead of me!_

See that wasn't so hard now was it? Just state the facts and then… face them.. and how those facts made you feel.

_That is what is at the root of all my problems with Midnight, how I felt…how utterly alone and helpless I felt as that creature took away EVERYTHING that makes me who am I._

_I was scared, truly scared and that isn't something I admit to readily but it is the truth_.

How it came to be on Midnight and where the rest of its kind were I don't think I'll ever know. Maybe it was always alone, maybe it, like me, is the last of its kind, destined to live out a lonely existence close to other life forms but never close enough. At least I have my companions – and I have never needed them more than I did then.

It wasn't Donna's fault that she wasn't there with me – how was she to know the trouble I could get myself into without her there to look out for me. Sometimes I'm amazed I've lived this long! But I digress…I'm not much good with this type of thing...

_It stole my words and with them my thoughts. It made me incapable of anything, even movement was beyond me. I should have been able to keep it from my mind, but somehow I never even realised it had got inside me until I could do nothing other than listen to the hatred and the fear and the desperate agonies of people torn apart by what they knew was right and what they thought and felt they needed to do to survive._

_It took everything from me except my awareness and that was a cruel fate. To hear what is being said and to know that it is wrong, that they are wrong and be unable to do anything to stop them. I couldn't speak to tell them how wrong they were – although I think, if I had been able to, my words would have only been the wrong ones._

_If they had done what the 'creature' wanted and thrown me out onto the planet's surface that would have been the end of the Time Lords. I can survive many things but even I can't survive prolonged exposure to an X-Tonic sun. It would have taken all my regenerations and left the empty shell of my body to never be found._

_I tried, I really tried to move and to speak but I was truly paralysed and without Donna by my side I had no allies, no one wanted to help me. I could feel the tendrils of the creature's mind in my own._

_It was alone in the dark and the cold and it wanted …what? It didn't really want me I was just an inconvenience, maybe it had what it wanted in Sky. If it could maintain its hold on her it could pick the others off one by one and be the sole survivor – taken back to a place full of people…fresh minds for it to corrupt._

The thought of the damage that the 'creature' could have wreaked back in the Leisure Palace is frightening. Maybe one alone couldn't turn all the people against each other but paranoia is a strong emotion and emotions are unpredictable…I'm sure that there would have been many more deaths before it was defeated.

I had told them that when we all got back I would make sure that the creature didn't harm anybody else; I would look after it and give it what it wanted. I think if I had taken it back to the Leisure Palace then I would, maybe unwittingly, have done just that. Given it what it wanted, but at what cost?

I_ was saved in the end by the strength of conviction of a woman who had been bullied and harassed into following the crowd, made to look small and feel insignificant by a man who wasn't even really her intellectual equal and another who took her duty to the most extreme level and gave her life to save us all._

_The Crusader 50 was a place where rational thought and normality had long since ceased to have any place. It was full of hatred and paranoia, fear and the need to survive. That was the most powerful emotion there … everybody's need to survive. Even I felt that way… I mean you don't think that I actually wanted to die there do you?_

_I have felt that way many times, but not this time. Since the Time War I have found a new reason…new reasons... to live and I didn't want to die. But as Hobbes and Biff and even Jethro let their own compassion for another living creature get warped into a hatred of me, just because I was different, just because I was something that they didn't really understand, I couldn't see how I would survive._

_As they started to drag me towards the emergency exit door I was completely helpless, I couldn't move to help myself, I couldn't talk to help myself. I could no nothing except listen to my own voice inside my head, weak and small and insignificant pleading with them to stop, pleading with them not to do this._

_The creature's voice was loud and clear, still speaking though Sky, still urging them on making sure they didn't waver or question why they were doing what they were. Making sure they thought that it was still alright to kill me because I was possessed. I wasn't…..not really… I wasn't me that is for certain but I wasn't totally lost.. I knew what was going on.. I could see and understand what the creature was doing even as it rendered me incapable of saving myself it left enough of me untouched to enjoy the horrors it unleashed._

I wonder if that was what it wanted, the emotional life force of others, feeding on them to grow stronger? There are creatures in the universe, empathic life forms, that need that…it could have been one of those…I don't know and really for once in my life I have to say that I don't want to know!

_What it did to me and to the others has left me drained, emotionally scarred if I'm honest…anything that can take good honest decent people and turn them into monsters (that may seem a harsh description but it isn't – it is the truth – they were monsters) is best left well alone, even by a Time Lord_.

_Dee Dee saw the creature for what it was, saw that really it hadn't ever left Sky and although it appeared to be possessing me it was just an extension of Sky. It still had her voice not mine._

_The Hostess too…(and how sad I am now that I never took the time to find out her name) knew something wasn't right. She had followed the crowd, led them even in their condemnation of Sky and of me…urged them on and showed them ways to do what they wanted to…and yet somewhere deep inside her she knew that it wasn't right. And thankfully for me, and I guess for everybody else too, she found a courage that the others had sadly lacked to voice that conviction, to stand alongside Dee Dee and say that the others were wrong_.

I don't know why she would do that. I wasn't anything to her, just another passenger…John Smith… joined at the last minute didn't even book…maybe she believed it was her duty to save the Crusader 50 and when she had made her decision nothing would stop her.

I hate the fact that two lives were lost. Even if her sacrifice saved hundreds of others it shouldn't have had to happen that way. I should have done more.

_I was helpless to prevent her death and I shouldn't have been._

_I should have saved her._

_I should have saved the creature._

_I should have done more_

_I shouldn't have been so helpless_.

I_ wasn't in control and it cost good people their lives and I have to live with that. I have to live with the fact that without my companions I'm not half the man I should be._

_They complete me, they save me every day, they have done ever since I came back to Earth, broken from the horror of the Time War and I never want to be without them again._

_And that's it… I'm done in this journal now. Midnight nearly cost me my life and all because I hadn't learnt from the people around me, but I won't make that mistake again._

_Humans are both the most fantastic and the most evil beings in the universe; they can show great compassion and great hatred, sometimes at the same time, but the Universe would be a much poorer place without them. I would be a much poorer person without them._

_Midnight wasn't my finest hour but I will learn from it and I will try to be more tolerant and more understanding. I can't promise to always be successful but I'll always try and I'll always make sure that I have somebody by my side to help me when I falter._

_After all the Universe needs me…I'm the last of the Time Lords and without me….well chaos would reign and we can't have that...can we?_

I slammed the journal shut with a finality that was a little more than it deserved. I'd almost faced everything that happened to me on Midnight and I'd certainly done enough to banish all the fears that had plagued me since I stepped back off the Crusader 50.

For the first time in a while I felt like me again... I felt like the Doctor of old, ready to take on whatever the Universe had to throw at me. Although I didn't actually want it to throw too much at me too soon… I thought that maybe both Donna and I needed a break and I knew just the place. I drop the journal on the desk and with a spring in my step race for the console room

Shan Shen has a great market and the best frothy coffees anywhere. Donna will love it…just love it!!


End file.
